The Cone Nebula And The Pillars Of Creation

The changes that occur during a star 's life are called stellar evolution. The mass of a star determines the ultimate fate of a star. Stars that are more massive burn their fuel quicker and lead shorter lives. Because stars shine, they must change. The energy they lose by emitting light must come from the matter of which the star is made. This will lead to a change in its composition. Stars are formed from the material between stars, shine until they exhaust their fuel, and then die a predictable death based upon their initial mass.

Curtis correctly noted that spectral lines could be seen within the spiral nebulae, and that they were generally consistent with the nebulae in the form of large assembled star clusters. These clusters supported Curtis's argument that these were in fact stellar systems, which are comparable to our Milky Way

I chose the Orion constellation because after doing some research, I found that the history of this constellation was very interesting. The Orion constellation looks like a man holding a weapon and a dead lion, so it was named after a hunter in Greek mythology. The Orion is located on the celestial equator and it consists of seven stars known as Betelgeuse, Rigel, Bellatrix, Mintaka, Alnilam, Alnitak, and Saiph, but it's brightest stars are Rigel and Betelgeuse. This constellation is most visible between January and March at evening time and can be seen all across the world.

Discoveries of what were termed “nebulae” began in the early 17th century. The first of these discoveries was the Orion Nebula, which looked like a normal star to the naked eye. French scholar Peiresc discovered it in 1610 using one of the first telescopes to be made. Later, in 1656, Christiaan Huygens observed the interior of the Orion Nebula and determined that it consisted of a compact quadruple star system instead of a singular star. During the 18th and 19th century, nebulas were discovered even though astronomers were mainly scanning the sky for comets. Some major astronomers who contributed greatly to the discovery of nebulas, among other things, during the 18th and 19th century were Messier and the Herschel family. Though the instrumentation available to astronomers during the 18th and 19th century were highly advanced compared to earlier times, they weren’t advanced enough to detect the motion of extragalactic objects or their composition. This lack of precision instrumentation, and thus the dissociation from motion of stars/star-clusters/nebulae, were the main reasons astronomers during this

The Orion Nebula contains one of the brightest star clusters in the night sky. With a magnitude of 4, this nebula is easily visible from the Northern Hemisphere during the winter months. It is surprising, therefore, that this region was not documented until 1610 by a French lawyer named Nicholas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc. On March 4, 1769, Charles Messier inducted the Orion Nebula, M42, into his list of stellar objects. Then, in 1771, Messier released his list of objects for its first publication in Memoires de l'Academie.1

The Carina Nebula is located in the Milky Way Galaxy in the constellation Carina in the Carina-Sagittarius Arm. It is sometimes referred to as the Eta Argus, referencing the former constellation, Argo Navis, which represented Jason and the Argonauts. It has been estimated at around 7500 ly (light-years) from earth. It was discovered in 1751-52 by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille and was later found to be one of the largest emission stars in the galaxy. Its entire mass is around 900,000 solar masses which is equivalent to 270 million pounds. It contains several open clusters of stars along with many O-type stars. It used to contain thousands of more stars than it does today, but many self-destructed. It is home to the Trumpler 14 and Trumpler 16

On the night of March 13, 1781, a British astronomer William Herschel was observing the sky. He moved his telescope from one star to another, looking for two stars that were close together that made it seem like one star. That was when he stopped on something unexpected. It was not a point of light, but a fuzzy disk. At first glance he thought it was a comet. He observed it over the next several days and discovered something spectacular.

You are probably wondering where did these things come from and how are they formed? Well I am about to tell you, Low mass stars are formed when all the helium has fused into carbon, then the core collapses. As the star collapses, the outer layers of the star are expelled. A planetary nebula is formed by the outer layers a massive star that will undergo a supernova explosion. Then when the low mass star is done forming after billions of years they start to become giants.

William Herschel was an amateur astronomer. “During the day his house was a school of music. Suddenly, it was a telescope factory as well. During the night it was an observatory” (Littman, 6). In 1781, while completing his “second all-sky survey with one of his home-made telescopes”, he saw something he couldn’t specify as a comet or a nebula.

In further detail, the celestial object contains massive stars that shape the nebula and pillars of dense gas that may house budding young stars. The heaviest stars at the center are called Trapezium because they are arranged in a trapezoid pattern (Hubble,2006). The stars near Trapezium are young and still have protoplanetary disks, too small for us to see yet. At the bottom of the nebula there are brown dwarfs that couldn’t be stars, this explains the darker shade of red in the image. The row of three stars make up the belt of the hunter, Orion. It has bright supergiant’s Betelgeuse, and Rigel at the upper left shoulder and

The Helix Nebula also known as The Helix, NGC 7293, God’s Eye, and the Eye of Sauron, is a planetary nebula. It is around 10,000 years old. It is approximately 650 light-years from Earth and it spans about 2.5 to 3 light-years across. This intricately shaped planetary nebula is also located in the constellation of Aquarius. The Helix is a very interesting, complex planetary nebula to understand. Scientists

Stars do not form out of nowhere and just pop into appearance in space. Star formations happen in clouds

Cassiopeia is a constellation located in the northern sky. It is made up of five stars which, when in upper culmination, appears in a 'M' shape, whereas in lower culmination, it appears as a 'W'. It is the varying appearance of the constellation which appeals to me. It is bordered by Andromeda to the South, Perseus to the South East and to the north is Cepheus, opposite Cassiopeia is the Big Dipper. Due to its location lying in rich Milky Way star fields, it contains many deep sky subjects such as open clusters and nebulae.

William Herschel was a German-born Englishman who, at first was a musician and later developed a huge passion for the stars (Redd). “On March 13, 1781, Herschel noticed a small object that, over the course of several nights, was slowly moving across the sky” (Redd). At first, Herschel believed the small object to be a comet, but later found that it was actually a planet! He observed how, even though the Earth was moving away from the object, later to be called the planet Uranus, it seemed to be getting larger, reaffirming his beliefs that the object discovered was a comet. Herschel reported his findings and how he came to discover the “comet” to the Royal Society of London which was published in their paper on April 26, 1781. In it he said,

Bryan Gaensler is an Australian born astronomer who is currently leading a team of Australia’s best astronomers in the ARC Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO). His main field of study is cosmic magnetism which also encompasses the study of supernova remnants. Because magnetic fields are not visible to the naked eye or regular telescopes, Gaensler’s team must use radio telescopes to view the polarised radiation being emitted. By using radio telescopes to view the fields, they are able to view the “Faraday Rotation” of distant objects and galaxies. Michael Faraday showed that a magnet is capable of producing a rotational motion in a conductor carrying a current. So, in this; light from a background object is altered when it is subjected to a cloud of magnetised gas. Through the analysis of these observations, three dimensional maps of cosmic magnetism can be rendered which will ultimately show the role they play in the functioning of the universe and how magnetic fields work.